Leatherman Wave Review

By now you have probably heard of Leatherman, if not and your looking for a multitool, take a closer look at leatherman tools. For their multitools, they make anything from a small multitool such as the Freestyle, to a much bigger model such as the Wave. When we say bigger, its not really much bigger or heavier than their smaller tools, but they just have more tools on one Multitool. For this leatherman review, we are going to take a closer look at the Leatherman Wave which has a total of 17 tools in 1.

Before we picked up the Wave, we were expecting it to be a little heavy for a multitool and rather bulky, come on its 17 tools in 1. However we were pleasantly surprised when we opened the box and took a closer look at this tool. It was actually quite light weighing only 8.5 oz. The dimensions are 4″ in length and the thickness was only 5/8″. Pretty amazing. After seeing this we thought with it being so light and so compact, it had to be a little hard to handle when using some of the tools. Right away we could tell it was not built cheaply, it is just one of those things you can feel when you pick up a product. In fact Leatherman believes in their tools so strongly, they gave this a 25 year warranty. We should note this tool is made of Stainless Steel.

As we noted above, considering the lightness and the compactness of this tool, we thought it might be a little hard to handle when using the tools. Well for the most part we were wrong. On the outside of the Wave there are four tools, two which can be opened with one hand operation. Both knives, the clip-point and serrated knife, can be opened with one hand. The File and the saw takes two hands to open. Obviously because these four tools are dangerous, they all lock into place. Once you have one of the tools out, they are very easy to work with. The base of the tool acts as a great handle to hold while you are using the knife, file or saw. A user can feel very comfortable using and still having complete control of the tool.

On the inside of the wave are the rest of the tools. Again very well designed. Other than the pliers or cutters, you can open a tool up, close both handles back down and this gives the one nice handle to work with. You have lots of control. As with the outside tools, these inside tools also lock into place to help protect your hands when you are working with one of these tools. Once you open up and use the pliers, the handles are very nice and again very easy to work with and control.

We did a lot of work with the tool and it held up great. We knew it would withstand the falls on cement, but we wanted to try some other tests to this tool. Our goal was to test this tool and see what would happen if you didn’t use the tool the proper way, such as not putting enough pressure on the pliers. We used the pliers and instead of putting enough pressure on the handles to unscrew the bolt, we wanted to see if the pliers would strip, from not gripping the bolt tight enough. Actually the small ribs on the pliers held up great. We could actually see the bolt becoming more round and we could see we were doing more damage to the bolt than the pliers.

We also tried this test on the large and small bit driver. As you can see from the picture above, the small bit driver is very small, small enough for eyeglass screws. For the large bit driver, obviously we did get the Philips to strip when we didn’t put enough pressure on the bit, but it did take us a long time and if anyone did what we did, then they deserve to buy another replaceable bit. Oh by the way, all these bits are easy to replace.

Final Thoughts On the Wave

Overall the Leatherman Wave is a great multitool. Very light and what is great, you get so many tools without the bulkiness. The pouch is a great side storage system so you always have access to your tools. Whether you are in the trades, a farmer or just a tool lover, we think this is one tool that everyone will enjoy and get good use of. The one downside we saw to this tool are the prices they charge for replacement bits. Not that they are too expensive, but they are more expensive than if you had to buy a #2 bit for your drill which is understandable.

One thing I didn’t like about the Wave was the tendency to pinch your hand when using the pliers. I recently upgraded to the newest version of the Surge Leatherman tool and this problem went away. The Surge is basically the same tool, made larger.

If you have large hands and are doing heavier tasks, consider the Surge instead of the Wave.